A/n: Thanks so much for the kind reviews! :D

Yume Li : Yes, the basic plot in this is essentially the same as the movie. The difference is in the world of story and the characters. There are a few totally different scenes from the original, all the character relationships are a little more screwy, and the characters themselves are kind of more grim (in Hiccup's case there's a bit less snark and a little more emotional vulnerability, etc.).

Final Syai : You're totally right, there isn't really gore, now I think about it... I just meant slightly more than in the original. Like the actual acknowledgment that blood exists. :B And of course you found this portrayal of Toothless to be exceptionally weird when my specific goal in this fic was to make anthro-Toothless more accessible. Doh, fail! XP Well I guess he was supposed to be eerie and threatening in that scene... haha well we'll see how it goes. :P Wait for Hiccup's perception of him to change... (and now I have "Something There" from Beauty and The Beast in my head ._.).


Shadows scattered as the dim firelight leapt and fell against the wooden walls. The man loomed over all in the room like a great bear, reared upon its hind legs. Atop his plated armor, he wore a coat stripped from a boar's hide. An axe hung from his beefy hand as he turned away from the flames, and darkness cloaked half of his thick, bearded face.

Stoick the Vast, chief of the sturdy Viking village, Berk, looked down on the boy whose veins carried generations upon generations of warrior's blood, the boy whose name derived from Stoick's own mighty ancestors, the boy begot of the fairest and bravest woman in Berk. Stoick looked down on the small, quirky youth, whose only likeness to his father was the reddish shade of his hair. He looked on his son, but saw only a stranger.

"I don't want to fight dragons," Hiccup objected weakly.

The man scoffed. All Hiccup had ever begged from the village chief was to let him fight and prove himself to the Vikings. Stoick had kept the last of his bloodline away from the dragon battles, not only to protect the boy, but also to keep a closed door between mischief and the clumsiest child in Berk.

But if Hiccup was to become more than a child, Stoick could no longer shield him. The man dismissed his son's protest and bestowed his axe into Hiccup's bony arms. The boy staggered, back bowing as he struggled to uphold his father's weapon.

"Are you not hearing me?" he beseeched. The fire seemed to cackle at him.

His father straightened the axe in Hiccups arms, forcing it into the palm of his right hand. (He had forgotten the boy was left-handed.)

"When you carry this axe," the man said in deep, husky tones, "you carry all of us."

Hiccup swallowed.

"That means you walk like us," Stoick continued, clasping the boy's thin shoulders between his meaty hands, "you talk like us," he pulled upwards sharply, trying to correct this son's posture, and the boy made a small, surprised sound against his father's brusque touch, "and you think like us." The man stepped into Hiccup's light. His shadow engulfed the boy. "No more of all..." he considered the youth, his bony limbs, the boyish face, the way he held himself –bent inwards like a servant—and the wide, round eyes that betrayed each facet of his mild, curious, analytical nature that shamed a Viking. "...this."

The boy rolled his eyes. "You just gestured to all of me," he pointed out.

Stoick ignored him again. "Deal?"

"This conversation is feeling very one-sided..."

"Deal?" the man repeated, brows furrowing ominously. He had no patience for or understanding of his son's strange, quiet complaints.

Hiccup held his tongue and took in a slow breath. He released it, and his posture deflated even further.

"Deal," he agreed quietly, and the light flickered.

...

The following morning, Hiccup's first day of training to fight dragons could not have gone worse. Gobber the Belch, a surly blacksmith and at best a questionable instructor, unleashed an utterly livid Gronkle dragon upon this year's batch of young fighters. It chased them in circles and spat fire against their shields. Hiccup stumbled, and the beast instantly rounded on the boy. As the day before, once more he looked up into the face of death – but this time, death was not so forgiving. The portly dragon parted its mighty jaws to release a final burst of flame and turn the boy's face into a heap of charred flesh. A mere moment before it fired, Gobber yanked the beast away from its prey, and the flames shot just above the boy's ducked head.

Some of the students looked disappointed that Hiccup survived. The blacksmith, burly lunatic that he was, scolded and teased the boy even more than his father, but his eyes always softened when he spoke to the funny little Viking. His look in the arena was rebuking, but beneath that flickered a sentiment rare to Vikings – simple, honest worry. Then, the remaining classmates seemed to care little whether Hiccup lived or burned.

After the lesson, the boy yielded to his ever-growing curiosity and returned to the place where the Night Fury had once lain. He picked at the remains of the slashed bola sling, balancing one of the stones at the end of a rope in his palm. He could still see the Gronkle's huge, gnashing teeth, and Gobber's words still sounded in his ears: a dragon will always go for the kill.

"So why didn't you?" he mused aloud, thoughts turning then to the intense, yellow eyes that now haunted his sleep.

Hiccup stood, letting the rock slip from his grasp, and peered inquisitively in the direction the strange being had flown towards yesterday. The youth's lips pinched with resolve, and Hiccup wandered cautiously after the Night Fury's trail. The path of trees bearing bent and dangling branches led him to a small niche in a precipice, near one of the borders of the island (he could smell the salt of seawater). Beyond the rim of the rock face, a lake glistened at him from the center of a lush valley, surrounded by high, white cliffs. All was still.

"...Well this was stupid," he grumbled to himself.

As he started to turn back, a patch of black caught his eye. Stooping, Hiccup picked up a small black scale, barely even the size of his thumbnails. He discovered a trail of them, leading down the edge of the hill from which he looked down.

Then something shot out above him.

Hiccup fell back, startled. The rocks shook, and there it was – the black demon, thrashing against the cliff with spread wings and clinging claws. It did not seem to notice the boy in the stone nook, all its energy directed at besting the mountainside. But the beast slid back down the steep rock and into the valley before it could secure a footing.

The boy scampered to his feet and stepped out from his ledge, eagerly climbing down some ways to get a better look at the creature. The Night Fury repeatedly took off from the ground and crashed back into it, hissing furiously every time. Hiccup hastily retrieved a notebook and charcoal from his vest, and started to sketch the demon's outline. The entire body was scaled and black like its face, and garbed only with what looked like a dark loincloth*. Its shape was so like a human's, like that of a strong youth's – not so thick and broad as the village warriors, but swelling with lean muscle along each exposed limb and the bare torso. The outspread wings were each about the span of the body, and a long, thick tail flicked behind them.

It stood with a strange, slightly coiled posture, sometimes low enough to rest a palm on the ground as it moved nimbly about the valley. The Night Fury touched its middle, and its eyes held an ache in them as they peered keenly into the lake, at the fat fish within. It hissed suddenly and lurched forward, reaching into the water for the finned food. But the fish escaped, and the creature seemed to sigh, not daring to venture any farther into the lake after the fish. Dragons were beings of fire, not water.

Hiccup surveyed his sketch with a small frown. "Why don't you just... fly away?" he wondered. Then, as the Night Fury spat a small, frustrated burst of flame, he noticed the asymmetrical shape of the creature's tail, and the caked fluid on the other side of the single fin. A second tail fin was missing.

It was hurt.

The boy watched the creature lament its wound with an uncomfortable grimace. His grip on the charcoal pencil loosened, and it fell from his grasp and rolled towards the edge of the cliff. Hiccup blinked out of his thoughts and jerked forward to catch pencil, but it was too late. It dropped conspicuously into the clearing, and the Night Fury looked up.

Hiccup froze. The Night Fury stared, still except for a small swish of its tail. Its pupils narrowed, inspecting the human with an inscrutable expression. The boy gulped. But the creature merely cocked its head and twitched its ears once before losing interest in Hiccup, returning to its vain efforts to feed and to fly. Hiccup blinked and slowly backed away from the edge, never taking his eyes off the creature until he was far enough back to lose sight of it. Then he turned and scurried back to the village as quickly as his legs would take him, leaving this time unhindered by fear, and ignited with anticipation.


A/n: *Yes, a goddamn loincloth. I know. I just can't get behind the whole reptilian it-comes-out-when-aroused thing. o_O If it don't work close enough to a human's stuff, it's a little too weird for me lol. Otherwise, he could just have it out there, uncovered, but that'd be a whole new level of awkward, wouldn't it... :S I dunno, I was thinking of having Hiccup give him a loincloth and/or some pants or something so he didn't die of embarrassment at every encounter haha. But then he'd have to sit through getting flashed until Toothless trusted him enough to accept the clothes sooooooo... just... this was the simplest solution okay! Shush. :B

Also, I love Hiccup and Stoick's relationship in the movie. It's really believable and touching, while also excruciating and somewhat destructive until things get resolved between them. This story kind of emphasizes the more destructive elements for a somewhat bleaker picture. But as with every aspect of this fic, the original portrayal is totally my fave, I'm just having some fun exploring a different angle. :P